Come and join our research community
By Matthew Alexander - Posted on 29 January 2021
Thinking of doing a PhD? This might tempt you - Associate Dean Postgraduate Research Dr Matthew Alexander outlines a number of fully funded scholarships available from Strathclyde Business School.
Strathclyde Business School is home to a vibrant and active community of postgraduate research students working across a wide range of business disciplines in our 5 academic departments. We are looking to increase our numbers with a set of fully funded scholarships. All scholarships offer funding Home/EU fee1 and an annual stipend at the RCUK rate (£15,009 in 2019/2020). Students studying at Strathclyde Business School have access to excellent facilities, training and funding to support conference attendance. Details of each of the scholarships are as follows:
Department of Economics
Childhood Education and Skill Development: Evaluating the Effects of Policy and School Environments
Supervisors: Dr Jonathan Norris & Dr Agnese Romiti
This project will evaluate two important channels affecting children’s educational and behavioural development: policy changes that impact family resources and features of the school environment. Moreover, to build equality in education, it is important to understand how such channels help, or hinder, children in low-income circumstances. We have a fully funded studentship to evaluate the effect of a recent policy shift in the UK– the shift to Universal Credit (UC) – on children’s academic and behavioural outcomes and evaluate the effect of a salient feature within school environments – teacher-student gender matches – on student performance and academic self-concept in the developing world.
Department of Work, Employment and Organisation
Supervisors: Dr Anastasios Hadjisolomou & Professor Dennis Nickson
Research reveals that sexual harassment is endemic in the hospitality sector. This research, however, has mainly focused on the experiences of female workers, with a gap in knowledge about male workers. This PhD project will address this gap, investigating the experiences of both female and male hospitality workers. The project will explore the extent to which the industry’s sexualised culture encourages and tolerates incidences of sexual harassment, especially by customers. The research is timely in a post-Covid-19 environment were concerns about socioeconomic instability and increasing unemployment mean that employees may feel further pressurised to tolerate and accept harassment by customers.
The Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurial Education: Towards greater geographical and cultural relevance
Dr Lucrezia Casulli & Dr Suzanne Mawson
What principles are of global relevance in entrepreneurial education? What is only relevant in some parts of the world but not others? Many students from all over the world complete their entrepreneurial education in Western Europe or North America. As part of their studies, they engage in training on how to think and act entrepreneurially (the so-called entrepreneurial mindset). However, the extent to which this training prepares them for business venturing in their country of origin is unclear. This PhD project will examine student perceptions of usefulness and relevance of entrepreneurship education across different cultural and geographical contexts.
Department of Management Science
Integrated production and maintenance planning in the age of big data
Dr Kerem Akartunali and Dr Bin Liu
To deal with today’s fierce competitions, many companies have invested into highly automated production system with sophisticated machines. However, unexpected failures of machines lead to deterioration of the product quality and the service level, causing huge losses. Whereas production on a deteriorated machine will decrease the product quality, the decrease of product quality in turn can be used an indicator of machine degradation. Overall, collaborative learning of the sensor data and production information will lead to an improved production and maintenance strategy. In this project, we propose to develop an integrated production and maintenance planning model by use of big data.
Smart Asset Management of Wastewater Treatment Processes
Dr Bin Liu and Professor Lesley Walls
A global challenge is to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the wastewater treatment process to manage environmental and other risks, such as spread of Covid-19. Wastewater treatment is essential for public health by removing pollutants before water is recycled back to the environment. This research focuses on a common treatment known as the activated sludge process. Recognizing sludge bulking early would allow better planning of maintenance and management of risk. This research will develop an integrated diagnosis, prediction and maintenance strategy with the goal of identifying reliable signals of sludge bulking and then advising on optimal cost-effective maintenance actions.
You can find more information on Postgraduate Research Opportunities here and if you have any questions about studying for a PhD at Strathclyde Business School please don’t hesitate to contact our Senior Faculty Administrator for Postgraduate Research Anna Yates at sbs-pgrsupport@strath.ac.uk
About Matthew Alexander
Dr Matthew Alexander is a Reader in the Department of Marketing and Associate Dean Postgraduate Research. His research focuses around opportunities and challenges associated with an increasingly knowledgeable and proactive customer base, specifically engagement, a concept capturing the blurring of boundaries between firms and customers, and aggregating the multiple ways activities beyond transactions influence organisations and shape markets.
